7 ms·

How normie minimalism and farmhouse chic took over contemporary design

63 points by jim-jim-jim 6y ago

bsder 6y ago
Exposed beams and infrastructure became fashionable because of restaurants. It was cheaper to put in (no drop ceilings) and had the benefit of being offensive enough on a noise level to keep people moving out of the restaurant. The fact that it became adopted everywhere is just painful to me. Note how everybody starts putting rugs everywhere in order to damp the noise ("They improve the vibe, man."). The Japanese seem to do better at this where their "minimalist" is driven by lack of space rather than misplaced aesthetics.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  I have a theory that when you get beyond the front door of most Japanese houses they are really like this: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/messiest-houses-in-japan/ https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/messiest-houses-in...
airstrike 6y ago
> Every interior, from the priciest New York City condo to the humblest exurban rancher, exists in a singular spectrum of gray, Marie Kondo-ed to perfection, absent of any clutter or unnecessary touches, each accessory and wall hanging meticulously selected and expertly placed. From their ceilings dangle rusticated light fixtures aglow with Edison bulbs; their kitchens are clad in quartz and subway tile; their wall art ranging from huge reproduced metal signs to huge reproduced David Hockney prints; their furnishings boasting either Pottery Barn white sofas or $11,000 showpieces from Design Within Reach, all atop a streaky, faux-distressed oriental rug. This is so incredibly on point it's actually sad, but on the flip side I'm happy someone who knows this stuff much better than I do is actually writing about it
- wmeredith 6y ago
  The only people who think this is true have spent too much time looking at pictures on the internet. There are plenty of homes in this country that people are living happily in, unplugged from the 'Gram.
  - lallysingh 6y ago
    Depends on the market you're shopping in. Every remodel I see, I swear, has the same stupid orbital rings or embedded box chandelier. Minimist down to basic geometry. Sterile, ugly, and gray. I was thinking of remodeling our kitchen, and the thought of what that would look like was... light gray.
    - airstrike 6y ago
      Literally went to see a friend's new apartment today, still to be furnished. Just the basics are in, like the wooden kitchen appliances that come with the unit which they had painted in... you guessed it, light gray
  - airstrike 6y ago
    I mean, the "every interior" is obviously hyperbole but the point still stands that this is probably the major trend in design right now to the point that whenever you see a home advertised / recently remodeled it looks almost exactly the same, with the same neutral colors and furniture choices that seem limited to Restoration Hardware and the like
awtawtwat3aw 6y ago
lol, someone wrote that.
com2kid 6y ago
> Their commonality lies in the same impulse for vacuous, petit bourgeois taste to launder itself in narratives of nostalgia and cultural legitimacy. Oh shove it. I like minimalism because I grew up in a house with 6 tvs for 4 people, and so many tupperware containers that it could take a solid 10 minutes (not exaggerating!) to find a matching container and lid. Finding a lid for a stove pot was of similar difficulty. So yeah, I have one set of storage containers from Costco (the same set pretty much everyone else has) and one set of pots and pans with matching lids, and little enough stuff that I can mostly find what I want. Minimalism is nice because it allows people to take control of their stuff, instead of stuff taking control of them. Minimalism is nice because I can go buy a few well made pieces of furniture that will last a long time. And minimalism is nice because it is a lot easier to dust. Edit: After giving it 5 minutes of thought, it becomes apparent that minimalism is extremely anti-consumerism. "Buy less stuff! Buy a few high quality items that last a long time! Don't get doilies for your couch arms!" No wonder American furniture retailers took forever to get on board. Heck up here in the Pacific Northwest it is still hard to find good modern furniture stores. Back when I graduated college and started outfitting my apartment, Ikea was pretty much the only show in town.
- soared 6y ago
  Agreed. My parents garage is messy and overflowing - mine is not. Simple as that.
  - Ghjklov 6y ago
    Having a garage is bloat
    - seabrookmx 6y ago
      Is having a kitchen bloat? If you like cooking, wouldn't a kitchen be important to you? What if you do woodworking, or you work on motorcycles in your free time? Then does a garage make sense?
      - 6y ago
mc32 6y ago
It works because it's clean, not fussy, not overdone. And it's approachable and retro modern. It better than 70s overcrowded earthiness (imbued with smoke) and accented with avocado greens. I' like to see their take on sunken living rooms though.
Xcelerate 6y ago
I like giant windows because I prefer seeing nature and sunlight over drab walls. I also don’t like clutter and a lot of visual commotion. Given those two parameters, there’s not that much of a variation on this theme to be had. I’m not trying to jump on some modern, minimalistic trend. I just want the building I’m in to be physically and visually comfortable. Also, cliche design trend or not, almost anything is better than the neo-eclectic style that took over the U.S. in the 90s (e.g., houses like this: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ca/4e/fa/ca4efad94007d5a5f9764b473a893dfb.gif https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ca/4e/fa/ca4efad94007d5a5f976...) Edit: just noticed that although I am not fond of the article and its writing style, the author is actually the person who created the McMansion hell blog, which criticizes the same type of neo-eclectic house style that I also criticize above. Go figure.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  I live pretty close to an area where loads of farmland is being bought up and turned into subdivisions, driven largely by national construction companies buying up hundreds of acres at a time. The picture you linked to could have been taken in any one of them. It's pretty depressing, but then again, I live in a cabin in the woods (definitely not for everyone) so to each their own I suppose.
taurath 6y ago
It’s cheap and reminds people of their favorite place, the office.
recursivedoubts 6y ago
Modern designers, architects and critics quite often share a very specific anxiety with their puritan forebearers: a haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
troughway 6y ago
While HN might be bullish on the article, I mostly agree with it, especially the quote given about the artists turning an industrial shop into something that is livable. It's an aesthetic of the poor in dire need of living and sleeping quarters, nothing more. Consider this: Everywhere you look, the rich don't have some yearning for minimalism. They have massive, lavish gates, gardens filled with sculptures and fountains, and if they are really going for it, interior cloisters with basketball courts and other amenities. High ceilings? Absolutely. Plenty of light? More than the building codes allow. That cottage they constructed on their massively acred forest property that's featured in some minimalist architecture digest magazine? That's for fun. Look at how much they paid (if they disclose) the architect to just design the thing. Good luck affording that. A bittersweet irony of life is minimalists eschewing anything to do with decorative veneer, while they jetset away to pose next to architecture from centuries past that screams opulence with the amount of detail and decorative elements that it has. Taste cannot be bought, even if it's shaped like a rectangle, made out of exotic wood, called "minimalist", and priced way out of your budget range to make you feel like you're somehow buying a one-of-a-kind item that will last you forever, because hey, you want fewer, but "higher quality" items, right?
yowlingcat 6y ago
I feel like this article began with a promising idea with a disappointing follow through. > Their commonality lies in the same impulse for vacuous, petit bourgeois taste to launder itself in narratives of nostalgia and cultural legitimacy. When thinking of minimalism, one can only wonder what the once-avant-garde cadre of artists and musicians would think about this hyper-commodified end product of their ethos, practice, and even their living circumstances. You can't just say the equivalent of "man I can't believe the suburban normies found out about farmhouse lofts -- look at what they took from us" and have that be an actual article. That's a concept barely fit for a bored teen tweeting during an art history class (no offense to them either, they would obviously be a lot more self aware than this), much less a longwinded magazine article. Frankly, those frontier domesticating artists who pioneered the cultural idea of a loft are far closer to true upper caste brahmins than the lumpenproletariat vaishyas (which are conflated with the petit bourgeois in a very subtle yet choppy interpolation) that necessarily only later on adopt a diluted version. And of course, it is those brahmin who reap the benefits of clout as their risky phenomenological investment is able to mature to a culturally valuable product and legacy that consumers cannot proclaim founding ownership over. One can only wonder what they would have thought -- to be honest, I can only imagine that they would be very happy and relieved to get a chance to cash out, because being an artist is an extremely competitive and generally financially unstable and unpleasant existence that is only truly available as a vocation to the upper castes. And ironically, I get the sense that it is the author trying to launder their own personal distastes aesthetic distaste through a ham fisted attempt to deploy Marxist terminology ("fetishize", "erasing", "bourgeois") at suburban denizens rather than any real reckoning with the political economy of the commodities that they even reference. Surely, America is in many ways a deeply, tragically uncool, suburban place where many people "just want to grill, for god's sake." But, it is that way unapologetically -- in some ways, unapologetic in a way that should maybe never be apologized for. America's suburbs are the promised land where so many people the world over seek a reality that maybe isn't perfect but an improvement to their current lot in life. It is a place of sameness, vacuum of space, and twee; it is a place of rurality and peaceful escape from society. It is a place where profound works of irony, satire and excess (unintentional and intentional) originate from; it is this excess which hypothecates Hollywood's culturally productive and originative influence not just in America but the world over; horrifying, to be sure, but also beautiful. Frustrating, at times, and yet sublime. To neither grasp nor express such a giant, sprawling plurality and how a thing of almost fractal bifurcations of seeming contradictions doesn't just fall over, is to me proof that perhaps this piece of writing still needs a good amount more revision, additional detail, and conceptual depth before it actually makes a statement. It's a shame because there very likely is a fascinating connection between pop minimalism and neo-farmhouse aesthetics there to be explored. But frankly, it would need to be explored by an author with a deft enough understanding of the people and communities who actually live in the areas they comment on to actually represent them thoughtfully -- or at least someone who had the desire to gain such an understanding.
Apocryphon 6y ago
This reminded me of a great comment on a thread for a similar critique about this aesthetic, imagining the future after Instagram-friendly minimalism: > I remain convinced that the next true popular aesthetic will be an offshoot of art deco combined with heavy nature related elements. The next wave of tech is clean tech. Electric cars and lab cultured meat. We've entered years of clean designs of pure white backgrounds derived from Apple and more recently the pastels. There's no chaos with our designs and too much order. I think Travis Kalanick was right to enter the real estate/land use industry. I think Stanford and Harvard buying up real estate in the central valley of California is the smartest decision. We're going back to the land, just like the 70's. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19735224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19735224
every 6y ago
Simply Danish Modern redux...
root_axis 6y ago
I like the look. Clean, bright, open, clutter-free and modern. I love the dangling light fixtures with vaulted ceilings and the look of quartz countertops and gray on white cabinets. My car is also a shade of metallic gray, so maybe I just resonate with the style. What a time to be alive.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I wonder how much of this is a reaction to Trump's tastes which are clearly the polar opposite of minimalism. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/making-america-crass-again https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/making-america-crass-aga...
- CincinnatiMan 6y ago
  Approaching zero. These trends were around before 2016.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

63 points by jim-jim-jim 6y ago

Exposed beams and infrastructure became fashionable because of restaurants. It was cheaper to put in (no drop ceilings) and had the benefit of being offensive enough on a noise level to keep people moving out of the restaurant. The fact that it became adopted everywhere is just painful to me. Note how everybody starts putting rugs everywhere in order to damp the noise ("They improve the vibe, man."). The Japanese seem to do better at this where their "minimalist" is driven by lack of space rather than misplaced aesthetics.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I have a theory that when you get beyond the front door of most Japanese houses they are really like this: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/messiest-houses-in-japan/ https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/messiest-houses-in...

airstrike 6y ago

> Every interior, from the priciest New York City condo to the humblest exurban rancher, exists in a singular spectrum of gray, Marie Kondo-ed to perfection, absent of any clutter or unnecessary touches, each accessory and wall hanging meticulously selected and expertly placed. From their ceilings dangle rusticated light fixtures aglow with Edison bulbs; their kitchens are clad in quartz and subway tile; their wall art ranging from huge reproduced metal signs to huge reproduced David Hockney prints; their furnishings boasting either Pottery Barn white sofas or $11,000 showpieces from Design Within Reach, all atop a streaky, faux-distressed oriental rug. This is so incredibly on point it's actually sad, but on the flip side I'm happy someone who knows this stuff much better than I do is actually writing about it

wmeredith 6y ago
The only people who think this is true have spent too much time looking at pictures on the internet. There are plenty of homes in this country that people are living happily in, unplugged from the 'Gram.
- lallysingh 6y ago
  Depends on the market you're shopping in. Every remodel I see, I swear, has the same stupid orbital rings or embedded box chandelier. Minimist down to basic geometry. Sterile, ugly, and gray. I was thinking of remodeling our kitchen, and the thought of what that would look like was... light gray.
  - airstrike 6y ago
    Literally went to see a friend's new apartment today, still to be furnished. Just the basics are in, like the wooden kitchen appliances that come with the unit which they had painted in... you guessed it, light gray
- airstrike 6y ago
  I mean, the "every interior" is obviously hyperbole but the point still stands that this is probably the major trend in design right now to the point that whenever you see a home advertised / recently remodeled it looks almost exactly the same, with the same neutral colors and furniture choices that seem limited to Restoration Hardware and the like

awtawtwat3aw 6y ago

lol, someone wrote that.

com2kid 6y ago

> Their commonality lies in the same impulse for vacuous, petit bourgeois taste to launder itself in narratives of nostalgia and cultural legitimacy. Oh shove it. I like minimalism because I grew up in a house with 6 tvs for 4 people, and so many tupperware containers that it could take a solid 10 minutes (not exaggerating!) to find a matching container and lid. Finding a lid for a stove pot was of similar difficulty. So yeah, I have one set of storage containers from Costco (the same set pretty much everyone else has) and one set of pots and pans with matching lids, and little enough stuff that I can mostly find what I want. Minimalism is nice because it allows people to take control of their stuff, instead of stuff taking control of them. Minimalism is nice because I can go buy a few well made pieces of furniture that will last a long time. And minimalism is nice because it is a lot easier to dust. Edit: After giving it 5 minutes of thought, it becomes apparent that minimalism is extremely anti-consumerism. "Buy less stuff! Buy a few high quality items that last a long time! Don't get doilies for your couch arms!" No wonder American furniture retailers took forever to get on board. Heck up here in the Pacific Northwest it is still hard to find good modern furniture stores. Back when I graduated college and started outfitting my apartment, Ikea was pretty much the only show in town.

soared 6y ago
Agreed. My parents garage is messy and overflowing - mine is not. Simple as that.
- Ghjklov 6y ago
  Having a garage is bloat
  - seabrookmx 6y ago
    Is having a kitchen bloat? If you like cooking, wouldn't a kitchen be important to you? What if you do woodworking, or you work on motorcycles in your free time? Then does a garage make sense?
    - 6y ago

mc32 6y ago

It works because it's clean, not fussy, not overdone. And it's approachable and retro modern. It better than 70s overcrowded earthiness (imbued with smoke) and accented with avocado greens. I' like to see their take on sunken living rooms though.

Xcelerate 6y ago

I like giant windows because I prefer seeing nature and sunlight over drab walls. I also don’t like clutter and a lot of visual commotion. Given those two parameters, there’s not that much of a variation on this theme to be had. I’m not trying to jump on some modern, minimalistic trend. I just want the building I’m in to be physically and visually comfortable. Also, cliche design trend or not, almost anything is better than the neo-eclectic style that took over the U.S. in the 90s (e.g., houses like this: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ca/4e/fa/ca4efad94007d5a5f9764b473a893dfb.gif https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ca/4e/fa/ca4efad94007d5a5f976...) Edit: just noticed that although I am not fond of the article and its writing style, the author is actually the person who created the McMansion hell blog, which criticizes the same type of neo-eclectic house style that I also criticize above. Go figure.

zdragnar 6y ago
I live pretty close to an area where loads of farmland is being bought up and turned into subdivisions, driven largely by national construction companies buying up hundreds of acres at a time. The picture you linked to could have been taken in any one of them. It's pretty depressing, but then again, I live in a cabin in the woods (definitely not for everyone) so to each their own I suppose.

taurath 6y ago

It’s cheap and reminds people of their favorite place, the office.

recursivedoubts 6y ago

Modern designers, architects and critics quite often share a very specific anxiety with their puritan forebearers: a haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

troughway 6y ago

While HN might be bullish on the article, I mostly agree with it, especially the quote given about the artists turning an industrial shop into something that is livable. It's an aesthetic of the poor in dire need of living and sleeping quarters, nothing more. Consider this: Everywhere you look, the rich don't have some yearning for minimalism. They have massive, lavish gates, gardens filled with sculptures and fountains, and if they are really going for it, interior cloisters with basketball courts and other amenities. High ceilings? Absolutely. Plenty of light? More than the building codes allow. That cottage they constructed on their massively acred forest property that's featured in some minimalist architecture digest magazine? That's for fun. Look at how much they paid (if they disclose) the architect to just design the thing. Good luck affording that. A bittersweet irony of life is minimalists eschewing anything to do with decorative veneer, while they jetset away to pose next to architecture from centuries past that screams opulence with the amount of detail and decorative elements that it has. Taste cannot be bought, even if it's shaped like a rectangle, made out of exotic wood, called "minimalist", and priced way out of your budget range to make you feel like you're somehow buying a one-of-a-kind item that will last you forever, because hey, you want fewer, but "higher quality" items, right?

yowlingcat 6y ago

I feel like this article began with a promising idea with a disappointing follow through. > Their commonality lies in the same impulse for vacuous, petit bourgeois taste to launder itself in narratives of nostalgia and cultural legitimacy. When thinking of minimalism, one can only wonder what the once-avant-garde cadre of artists and musicians would think about this hyper-commodified end product of their ethos, practice, and even their living circumstances. You can't just say the equivalent of "man I can't believe the suburban normies found out about farmhouse lofts -- look at what they took from us" and have that be an actual article. That's a concept barely fit for a bored teen tweeting during an art history class (no offense to them either, they would obviously be a lot more self aware than this), much less a longwinded magazine article. Frankly, those frontier domesticating artists who pioneered the cultural idea of a loft are far closer to true upper caste brahmins than the lumpenproletariat vaishyas (which are conflated with the petit bourgeois in a very subtle yet choppy interpolation) that necessarily only later on adopt a diluted version. And of course, it is those brahmin who reap the benefits of clout as their risky phenomenological investment is able to mature to a culturally valuable product and legacy that consumers cannot proclaim founding ownership over. One can only wonder what they would have thought -- to be honest, I can only imagine that they would be very happy and relieved to get a chance to cash out, because being an artist is an extremely competitive and generally financially unstable and unpleasant existence that is only truly available as a vocation to the upper castes. And ironically, I get the sense that it is the author trying to launder their own personal distastes aesthetic distaste through a ham fisted attempt to deploy Marxist terminology ("fetishize", "erasing", "bourgeois") at suburban denizens rather than any real reckoning with the political economy of the commodities that they even reference. Surely, America is in many ways a deeply, tragically uncool, suburban place where many people "just want to grill, for god's sake." But, it is that way unapologetically -- in some ways, unapologetic in a way that should maybe never be apologized for. America's suburbs are the promised land where so many people the world over seek a reality that maybe isn't perfect but an improvement to their current lot in life. It is a place of sameness, vacuum of space, and twee; it is a place of rurality and peaceful escape from society. It is a place where profound works of irony, satire and excess (unintentional and intentional) originate from; it is this excess which hypothecates Hollywood's culturally productive and originative influence not just in America but the world over; horrifying, to be sure, but also beautiful. Frustrating, at times, and yet sublime. To neither grasp nor express such a giant, sprawling plurality and how a thing of almost fractal bifurcations of seeming contradictions doesn't just fall over, is to me proof that perhaps this piece of writing still needs a good amount more revision, additional detail, and conceptual depth before it actually makes a statement. It's a shame because there very likely is a fascinating connection between pop minimalism and neo-farmhouse aesthetics there to be explored. But frankly, it would need to be explored by an author with a deft enough understanding of the people and communities who actually live in the areas they comment on to actually represent them thoughtfully -- or at least someone who had the desire to gain such an understanding.

Apocryphon 6y ago

This reminded me of a great comment on a thread for a similar critique about this aesthetic, imagining the future after Instagram-friendly minimalism: > I remain convinced that the next true popular aesthetic will be an offshoot of art deco combined with heavy nature related elements. The next wave of tech is clean tech. Electric cars and lab cultured meat. We've entered years of clean designs of pure white backgrounds derived from Apple and more recently the pastels. There's no chaos with our designs and too much order. I think Travis Kalanick was right to enter the real estate/land use industry. I think Stanford and Harvard buying up real estate in the central valley of California is the smartest decision. We're going back to the land, just like the 70's. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19735224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19735224

every 6y ago

Simply Danish Modern redux...

root_axis 6y ago

I like the look. Clean, bright, open, clutter-free and modern. I love the dangling light fixtures with vaulted ceilings and the look of quartz countertops and gray on white cabinets. My car is also a shade of metallic gray, so maybe I just resonate with the style. What a time to be alive.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

I wonder how much of this is a reaction to Trump's tastes which are clearly the polar opposite of minimalism. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/making-america-crass-again https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/making-america-crass-aga...

CincinnatiMan 6y ago
Approaching zero. These trends were around before 2016.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]